It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.